In this paper, I will discuss recent claims to asylum in Austria that were submitted by queer men from Muslim-majority countries. The responsible Austrian officials rejected the cases in question because the gender representations of the men were assessed as either “too girlish,” or “not gay enough,” and, the claimants’ stated sexualities were consequently – in both cases – read to be “fake.” While mobilizing homophobia in their assessments, the officials’ negative decisions contain an implicit transfer of homophobia to the Other/Muslim country. I elaborate how homophobia is here strategically transferred to the Other/Muslim/migrant; and, what is more, I argue that this move is most significant when read in its explanatory potential regarding the European self. In other words, sexism, homophobia, and/or transphobia transferred to the Muslim Other functions here to silence self-criticism and buffers the constructed illusion of a “self” that is, then, precisely not sexist/homophobic/transphobic, et cetera. Drawing on decolonial and feminist scholarship, I will point towards alternative epistemologies and ontologies that can escape the binary thinking inherent in dominant Western thought. It is these binaries that, for me, lie at the heart of the ‘unbelievability’ of Black/Brown/Muslim men as queer subjects. I will analyse the binary construction of gender and sexualities, and the intersections of gender, sexualities and ethnicity/race/racialized religion. While Black and Brown men are framed to have “access masculinitiy,” within a patriarchal, heteronormative and homophobe paradigm, homosexuality is placed to be antithetic to masculinity. I conclude by analysing the policing of boundaries and borders that in the case of the public servants’ negative decisions reinforce both the nation’s borders and the dichotomies of men/women, and straight/queer simultaneously.

Riikka Prattes has a background in Social and Cultural Anthropology (University of Vienna) and completed her doctorate in an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Social and Political Thought at the Institute for Social Justice at ACU, Sydney. At present, Riikka lives in Cadi/Sydney and works as an independent researcher. Her research interests include feminist epistemologies, epistemologies of ignorance, and decolonial theory, feminist care ethics, the international division of reproductive labour, and critical studies of men and masculinities. Her recent publications include: Prattes, Riikka. 2019. ‘I don’t clean up after myself.’ Epistemic Ignorance, Responsibility, and the Politics of the Outsourcing of Domestic Cleaning. In: Feminist Theory.

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